Thing 12

Suddenly I feel a bit behind with CPD23 things having been on holiday and come back to the pre-term frenzy. I will try and blog a few times over the next couple of weeks to catch up before term starts, after which who knows when I will get the chance!

Briefly Thing 12 then...

I definitely think there are more advantages than disadvantages to social networking in a professional capacity and hope to become more involved as time goes on. Prior to CPD23 I had dabbled a little using Facebook in a personal rather than professional capacity and followed a few blogs.

Since starting CPD I have had a look at Twitter although I feel I am not able to get the full benefit at the moment as it is blocked at work and my phone is not yet of the 21st century... soon be Christmas! Since finishing my studies at Aberystwyth I had missed the sense of community offered by Moodle discussion threads to distance learners, so I am enjoying reading, writing and commenting within the library blogging community since starting CPD23. When working in libraries such as those in schools and colleges where library staff may be lone working or in a very small minority it is good to be able to network with others in similar situations and share best practice.

Things 10 and 11

I have taken a rather circuitous route into library work. It was something I always wanted to do but when I graduated in French Studies (back in 1990) I wanted to be out earning money. I was young and in love(!) and didn't want to commit to 9 months as a graduate trainee before going back into studying which was, as far as I knew, the only option at the time. I was also keen to use my language skills. I acquired my first job as a result of temping - I happened to be working at the English headquarters of an Anglo French company who on discovering I was fluent in French offered me a post as bilingual PA to the the finance director. Despite my bosses attempts to interest me in the financial markets, finance wasn't really my thing however. My second and much more "me" job was at a multimedia language centre at Loughborough University, this was followed by LA and SLA at library headquarters in British Forces Germany. After starting a family and returning to the UK, due to circumstances I left library work for a while and spent 7 years working my way up in local government HR. This gave me many transferable skills and experience including training, project management, budget management and partnership working. However I missed library work and then I found out about Aberystwyth's distance learning course and applied and was accepted onto the course. I felt I would be better off working in a library environment whilst studying, so took a large cut in salary (money isn't everything I learnt since 1990!) and applied for my current post as part-time LA in FE and later also in the public library. Having recently qualified I am now starting to think about chartership and looking to move to a professional post where I can put my both library knowledge and experience and skills gained in libraries and elsewhere into practice.

Reading some of the other CPD blogs about this thing has reminded me that I too used to put library tickets into my Enid Blyton collection and was a librarian at my junior school. It is definitely a vocation ;)

Things 8 and 9

The weeks seem to be flying by and it is quite difficult to keep up with the "things" thank heavens there's a catch up week soon. As far as Thing 8 Google calendar is concerned I have decided that one is not for me because I use Outlook at work. Going back to one of my early posts I am still a bit nervous as to what information I put out in cyberspace and so don't quite like the idea of saying I am on holiday in Timbuktu in a calendar so someone can hack in and go burgle my house - call me old fashioned but I only write that on my kitchen calendar! Current revelations of hacking scandals have done nothing to reassure me I have to say. So I think I will stick with my work calendar for now which is just shared between colleagues, and my kitchen calendar without which my life and the lives of my family would fall apart.

Thing 9 Evernote looks much more interesting though and I can see its potential. Amazingly network security at work allowed me to download it onto my PC. I have not yet had as much luck on my home laptop however - maybe because it is this week's "thing" there is a lot of traffic so I will keep trying. I have tentatively made a couple of notes. Previously I have just saved everything of potential use to my Delicious account.

As there have been quite a few new things for me to get to grips with so far it is going to take a while to get the benefits and realise the potential of some of them but at least keeping up with the course is making me have a go. One thing coming out of CPD23 is that I should really upgrade my phone to take advantage of what is out there.

Meanwhile I am catching up with many tasks in the LRC and preparing for the new term whilst the students are on holiday - no customers but lots of maintenance going on around me - trees being chopped down outside my window, roof, which was stolen over the weekend being replaced (yes that's right, stolen!) so not very peaceful - but there's never a dull moment.